canvas-student-data-export/docs/README.md

# Introduction
The Canvas Student Data Export Tool can export nearly all of a student's data from Instructure Canvas Learning Management System (Canvas LMS).
This is useful when you are graduating or leaving your college or university, and would like to have a backup of all the data you had in canvas.

The tool exports all of the following data:
- Course Assignments
- Course Announcements
- Course Discussions
- Course Pages
- Course Files
- Course Modules

The tool will export your data in JSON format, and will organize it nicely into folders named for every term of every year.
Example:
- Fall 2013
  - Econ 101
    - course files
    - modules
    - Econ 101.json
  - English 101
    - course files
    - modules
    - English 101.json
- Fall 2014
- Fall 2015
- Fall 2016
- Spring 2014
- Spring 2015
- Spring 2016
- Spring 2017
- Winter 2014
- Winter 2015
- Winter 2016
- Winter 2017
- all_output.json

# Getting Started

## Dependencies
To run the program, you will need the following dependencies:  
`pip install requests`  
`pip install jsonpickle`  
`pip install canvasapi`  
`pip install python-dateutil`  
`pip install PyYAML`

`npm i github:gildas-lormeau/SingleFile`

You can install these dependencies using
`pip install -r requirements.txt` AND
`npm i`

Then run from the command line:
`python export.py`

## Configuration
These are the configuration parameters for the program:
- Canvas API URL - this is the URL of your institution, for example `https://example.instructure.com`
- Canvas API key - this can be created by going to Canvas and navigating to `Account` > `Settings` > `Approved Integrations` > `New Access Token`
- Canvas User ID - this can be found at `https://example.instructure.com/api/v1/users/self` in the `id` field
- Directory in which to download course information to (will be created if not present)
- List of Course IDs that should be skipped

### Loading credentials from a file
To avoid manually entering credentials every time you run the program, you can create a `credentials.yaml` file in the same directory as the script that has the following fields:

```yaml
API_URL: < URL of your institution >
API_KEY: < API Key from Canvas >
USER_ID: < User ID from Canvas >
COOKIES_PATH: < Path to cookies file>
```

You can then run the script as normal:
`python export.py`

# Contribute
I would love to see this script's functionality expanded and improved! I welcome all pull requests :) Thank you!